Bekijk Volledige Versie : Laden threatens 'unbelievable' attacks
NEW YORK: World's most wanted terrorist Osama Bin Laden convened a huge 'terror summit' in Afghanistan shortly after the Saddam Hussein regime collapsed in Iraq, in which he outlined plans to launch "unbelieveable" attacks using biological weapons, a media report said on Sunday.
At the meeting held in a mountain stronghold in April, Bin Laden said he was working on "serious projects", the latest issue of Newsweek magazine quotes Taliban officials in Pakistan and Afghanistan as saying.
"His priority is to use biological weapons," a source, who claimed that al-Qaeda already has such weapons, was quoted as saying. The source insisted he did not know any further details like how these would be transported, but bragged: "Osama's next step will be unbelievable."
The plan was reportedly delayed and revised after the March capture of al-Qaeda's operations chief Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Rawalpindi, the report said.
US intelligence officials were quoted as saying that no one disputed Bin Laden's interest in germ warfare. Nevertheless, they argued, his main priority was to kill Americans by any means readily at hand - and most bioweapons are harder to get and use than many of the alternatives.
Two years after the September 11 attacks, the world's most wanted terrorist remains free.
"We don't know where he is," US Army Col Rodney Davis, spokesman for US forces in Afghanistan, told Newsweek. "And frankly, it's not about him. We'll continue to focus on killing, capturing and denying sanctuary to any anti-coalition forces, whether they are influenced by Bin Laden or not."
Some US officials, the magazine said, speculated that life on the run had made it impossible for Bin Laden to communicate with his followers, effectively turning him into a figurehead.
"Bin Laden's operational role is not as important as it was to al-Qaeda and Taliban," said a senior US diplomat in Kabul. "But symbolically he is still very important."
But the senior Taliban officials contacted by Newsweek said Bin Laden remained directly engaged as a strategist and financier for al-Qaeda, the Taliban and related groups.
One man, named Khan Kaka, who lives in Afghanistan's remote Kunar province, told Newsweek that since 1996 his son-in-law, an Algerian named Abu Hamza al Jazeeri, has been a special bodyguard to Bin Laden, whom Kaka calls 'loar sheik' -- "big chief."
Every two months or so, al Jazeeri comes down from the mountains to visit his wife and three sons, who live with Kaka. "He appears and disappears like lightning," Kaka told Newsweek. "I never know when he's coming or going."
The old man and his neighbours listen eagerly to the latest news from the al-Qaeda leader's hideout.
On a visit in January, al Jazeeri reported, according to the magazine, that one of Bin Laden's daughters-in-law had recently died in childbirth and that Bin Laden blamed America for her death.
"I had enough riches to enjoy myself like an Arab sheikh," Bin Laden said, according to al Jazeeri's account. "But I decided to fight against those infidel forces that want to sever us from our Islamic roots. For that cause, Arabs, Taliban and my family have been martyred." Kaka and his neighbours have memorized the eulogy, Newsweek reports.
Asked where Bin Laden is now, he grinned and waved without a word toward the 12,000-foot peaks surrounding the valley: 'up there'.
Bin Laden seems to be in good health, according to both a former Taliban deputy foreign minister and an Afghan named Haroon, who claimed to have visited the al-Qaeda leader in June.
Three of Bin Laden's sons are said to be with him, sworn to kill their father rather than let him be captured alive. Two of his wives are said to be living nearby in the mountains, but not with him; he visits them when security allows, Newsweek reports.
Taliban sources told Newsweek that the al-Qaeda leader communicates with his friends and followers via handwritten letters and computer disks delivered by relays of messengers. Each carrier knows only where to find the next link in the chain. The system is slow, but it keeps the Americans from using electronic intercepts to find him.
Hmm dit nieuws komt door India? Of maakt bronvermelding niks meer uit tegenwoordig?
De middelen voor biologische oorlogsvoering zullen steeds makkelijker te kijgen zijn voor steeds meer groepen fanaten. Als de Aum sekte ze had gehad hadden ze ze ook gebruikt.
Lol, daarmee schoffeld hij het Midden-Oosten alleen maar verder onder de zoden.
Geplaatst door Brie
Hij heeft inmiddels al zo vaak gedreigd zonder zijn woorden kracht bij te zetten, dat het nog maar weinig indruk maakt.
Als die berichten al echt van Binladen afkomstig zijn, voor hetzelfde geld is hij morsdood.
Zijn netwerk is te groot, om te zeggen dat ze niks kunnen maken. Al is Bin Laden gestorven, er zullen altijd mensen zijn die zijn idealen zullen waar maken.
Vive Bin laden
one of Bin Laden's daughters-in-law had recently died in childbirth and Bin Laden blamed America for her death
Dit vat 's mans geestesgesteldheid fraai samen.
Zijn netwerk is te groot, om te zeggen dat ze niks kunnen maken. Al is Bin Laden gestorven, er zullen altijd mensen zijn die zijn idealen zullen waar maken.
Vive Bin laden
En er zullen altijd mensen zijn om dat dan weer te 100-voudig wreken. Het is een no-win situation. Ik hoop dus dat het over twintig jaar, als we terugkijken, een warrige periode blijkt te zijn geweest van meer geschreeuw dan wol.
Confessions of a Terrorist
Author Gerald Posner claims an al-Qaeda leader made explosive allegations while under interrogation
By JOHANNA MCGEARY
08/31/03 (Time Magazine) By March 2002, the terrorist called Abu Zubaydah was one of the most wanted men on earth. A leading member of Osama bin Laden's brain trust, he is thought to have been in operational control of al-Qaeda's millennium bomb plots as well as the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000. After the spectacular success of the airliner assaults on the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, he continued to devise terrorist plans.
Seventeen months ago, the U.S. finally grabbed Zubaydah in Pakistan and has kept him locked up in a secret location ever since. His name has probably faded from most memories. It's about to get back in the news. A new book by Gerald Posner says Zubaydah has made startling revelations about secret connections linking Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and bin Laden.
Details of that terrorism triangle form the explosive final chapter in Posner's examination of who did what wrong before Sept. 11. Most of his new book, Why America Slept (Random House), is a lean, lucid retelling of how the CIA, FBI and U.S. leaders missed a decade's worth of clues and opportunities that if heeded, Posner argues, might have forestalled the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Posner is an old hand at revisiting conspiracy theories. He wrote controversial assessments dismissing those surrounding the J.F.K. and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations. And the Berkeley-educated lawyer is adept at marshaling an unwieldy mass of information—most of his sources are other books and news stories—into a pattern made tidy and linear by hindsight. His indictment of U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies covers well-trodden ground, though sometimes the might-have-beens and could-have-seens are stretched thin. The stuff that is going to spark hot debate is Chapter 19, an account—based on Zubaydah's claims as told to Posner by "two government sources" who are unnamed but "in a position to know"—of what two countries allied to the U.S. did to build up al-Qaeda and what they knew before that September day.
Zubaydah's capture and interrogation, told in a gripping narrative that reads like a techno-thriller, did not just take down one of al-Qaeda's most wanted operatives but also unexpectedly provided what one U.S. investigator told Posner was "the Rosetta stone of 9/11 ... the details of what (Zubaydah) claimed was his 'work' for senior Saudi and Pakistani officials." The tale begins at 2 a.m. on March 28, 2002, when U.S. surveillance pinpointed Zubaydah in a two-story safe house in Pakistan. Commandos rousted out 62 suspects, one of whom was seriously wounded while trying to flee. A Pakistani intelligence officer and hastily made voiceprints quickly identified the injured man as Zubaydah.
Posner elaborates in startling detail how U.S. interrogators used drugs—an unnamed "quick-on, quick-off" painkiller and Sodium Pentothal, the old movie truth serum—in a chemical version of reward and punishment to make Zubaydah talk. When questioning stalled, according to Posner, cia men flew Zubaydah to an Afghan complex fitted out as a fake Saudi jail chamber, where "two Arab-Americans, now with Special Forces," pretending to be Saudi inquisitors, used drugs and threats to scare him into more confessions.
Yet when Zubaydah was confronted by the false Saudis, writes Posner, "his reaction was not fear, but utter relief." Happy to see them, he reeled off telephone numbers for a senior member of the royal family who would, said Zubaydah, "tell you what to do." The man at the other end would be Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, a Westernized nephew of King Fahd's and a publisher better known as a racehorse owner. His horse War Emblem won the Kentucky Derby in 2002. To the amazement of the U.S., the numbers proved valid. When the fake inquisitors accused Zubaydah of lying, he responded with a 10-minute monologue laying out the Saudi-Pakistani-bin Laden triangle.
Zubaydah, writes Posner, said the Saudi connection ran through Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, the kingdom's longtime intelligence chief. Zubaydah said bin Laden "personally" told him of a 1991 meeting at which Turki agreed to let bin Laden leave Saudi Arabia and to provide him with secret funds as long as al-Qaeda refrained from promoting jihad in the kingdom. The Pakistani contact, high-ranking air force officer Mushaf Ali Mir, entered the equation, Zubaydah said, at a 1996 meeting in Pakistan also attended by Zubaydah. Bin Laden struck a deal with Mir, then in the military but tied closely to Islamists in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (isi), to get protection, arms and supplies for al-Qaeda. Zubaydah told interrogators bin Laden said the arrangement was "blessed by the Saudis."
Zubaydah said he attended a third meeting in Kandahar in 1998 with Turki, senior isi agents and Taliban officials. There Turki promised, writes Posner, that "more Saudi aid would flow to the Taliban, and the Saudis would never ask for bin Laden's extradition, so long as al-Qaeda kept its long-standing promise to direct fundamentalism away from the kingdom." In Posner's stark judgment, the Saudis "effectively had (bin Laden) on their payroll since the start of the decade." Zubaydah told the interrogators that the Saudis regularly sent the funds through three royal-prince intermediaries he named.
The last eight paragraphs of the book set up a final startling development. Those three Saudi princes all perished within days of one another. On July 22, 2002, Prince Ahmed was felled by a heart attack at age 43. One day later Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud, 41, was killed in what was called a high-speed car accident. The last member of the trio, Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, officially "died of thirst" while traveling east of Riyadh one week later. And seven months after that, Mushaf Ali Mir, by then Pakistan's Air Marshal, perished in a plane crash in clear weather over the unruly North-West Frontier province, along with his wife and closest confidants.
Without charging any skulduggery (Posner told TIME they "may in fact be coincidences"), the author notes that these deaths occurred after cia officials passed along Zubaydah's accusations to Riyadh and Islamabad. Washington, reports Posner, was shocked when Zubaydah claimed that "9/11 changed nothing" about the clandestine marriage of terrorism and Saudi and Pakistani interests, "because both Prince Ahmed and Mir knew that an attack was scheduled for American soil on that day." They couldn't stop it or warn the U.S. in advance, Zubaydah said, because they didn't know what or where the attack would be. And they couldn't turn on bin Laden afterward because he could expose their prior knowledge. Both capitals swiftly assured Washington that "they had thoroughly investigated the claims and they were false and malicious." The Bush Administration, writes Posner, decided that "creating an international incident and straining relations with those regional allies when they were critical to the war in Afghanistan and the buildup for possible war with Iraq, was out of the question."
The book seems certain to kick up a political and diplomatic firestorm. The first question everyone will ask is, Is it true? And many will wonder if these matters were addressed in the 28 pages censored from Washington's official report on 9/11. It has long been suggested that Saudi Arabia probably had some kind of secret arrangement to stave off fundamentalists within the kingdom. But this appears to be the first description of a repeated, explicit quid pro quo between bin Laden and a Saudi official. Posner told TIME he got the details of Zubaydah's interrogation and revelations from a U.S. official outside the cia at a "very senior Executive Branch level" whose name we would probably know if he told it to us. He did not. The second source, Posner said, was from the cia, and he gave what Posner viewed as general confirmation of the story but did not repeat the details. There are top Bush Administration officials who have long taken a hostile view of Saudi behavior regarding terrorism and might want to leak Zubaydah's claims. Prince Turki, now Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Britain, did not respond to Posner's letters and faxes.
There's another unanswered question. If Turki and Mir were cutting deals with bin Laden, were they acting at the behest of their governments or on their own? Posner avoids any direct statement, but the book implies that they were doing official, if covert, business. In the past, Turki has admitted—to TIME in November 2001, among others—attending meetings in '96 and '98 but insisted they were efforts to persuade Sudan and Afghanistan to hand over bin Laden. The case against Pakistan is cloudier. It is well known that Islamist elements in the isi were assisting the Taliban under the government of Nawaz Sharif. But even if Mir dealt with bin Laden, he could have been operating outside official channels.
Finally, the details of Zubaydah's drug-induced confessions might bring on charges that the U.S. is using torture on terrorism suspects. According to Posner, the Administration decided shortly after 9/11 to permit the use of Sodium Pentothal on prisoners. The Administration, he writes, "privately believes that the Supreme Court has implicitly approved using such drugs in matters where public safety is at risk," citing a 1963 opinion.
For those who still wonder how the attacks two years ago could have happened, Posner's book provides a tidy set of answers. But it opens up more troubling questions about crucial U.S. allies that someone will now have to address.
Copyright © 2003 Time Inc.
11 September is uitgevoerd door de veiligheidsdiensten van Pakistan en Saudi Arabia, ongetwijfeld in opdracht van de Neocon fascisten, die al jarenlang (sinds begin jaren 80) contacten onderhouden met de 'terroristen' in Afghanistan. Toevalligerwijze waren het SA en Pakistan die als enige op de wereld het Taliban-regime erkenden.
11 September is uitgevoerd door de veiligheidsdiensten van Pakistan en Saudi Arabia, ongetwijfeld in opdracht van de Neocon fascisten, die al jarenlang (sinds begin jaren 80) contacten onderhouden met de 'terroristen' in Afghanistan. Toevalligerwijze waren het SA en Pakistan die als enige op de wereld het Taliban-regime erkenden.
Een wat boute stelling. Wie zijn de Neocon en waar zijn die voor nodig in dit verhaal? Amerika's neo conservatieven? Ik heb er geen bewijs voor gelezen, integendeel.
Geplaatst door GroteWolf
Een wat boute stelling. Wie zijn de Neocon en waar zijn die voor nodig in dit verhaal? Amerika's neo conservatieven? Ik heb er geen bewijs voor gelezen, integendeel. volgenns Lennart gebeurt niets op deze wereld zonder dat de neocons en / of Israel het op poten hebben gezet ... Eigenlijk is de rest van de wereld een stelletje nietsnutten dat nooit iets alleen kan ... Het idee dat een ander op een idee zou kunnen komen en het zou kunnen uitvoeren ... onmogelijk!!:)
Geplaatst door GroteWolf
Een wat boute stelling. Wie zijn de Neocon en waar zijn die voor nodig in dit verhaal? Amerika's neo conservatieven? Ik heb er geen bewijs voor gelezen, integendeel.
Ze wilden een 'oorlog tegen terrorisme'.
Reeds begin jaren negentig lanceerde Bernard Lewis zijn stelling dat Islam de tegenstander van de "vrije" Westen zou worden, vervolgens heeft Huntington dit idee omgezet in een slogan 'Clash of Civilizations'. Neocons, moet je weten, hebben goed geluisterd naar de politieke filosoof Leo Strauss. Leo Strauss was een Joodse duitser die vlak voor de tweedeoorlog naar de VS vluchtte. Vreemd genoeg gaf hij niet Nazi-Duitsland de schuld voor de Jodenvervolging, maar de Weimar-Republiek, dat toeliet dat de Nazi's aan de macht kwam. Hij verachtte de liberaal democratische toekomstvisie van de 18de eeuwse filosofen.
Daarentegen zag hij veel de ideeen van de ouden, zo onderwees hij Plato. Zijn ideaal staat was dan ook niet een liberale democratische staat, maar een autocratische staat geleid door de elite, die onwelwillende elementen makkelijk zouden kunnen elimineren. Hij beargumenteerde ook dat deze visie niet op te leggen zou zijn aan het volk als er geen buitenlandse dreiging is. Kortom een methode om de burgers massaal achter het land te krijgen. Hierin speelt ook religie een rol, niet als spirituele rol, maar als opium voor volk (Marx idee, maar volgens hem was het beter het dan maar af te schaffen, Strauss' idee was juist dat het volk haar opium nodig heeft).
Strauss was leermeester van de Neocon stroming. Hij leidde zeer invloedrijke politici op en zij zetten een indrukwekkend netwerk op, die in het politieke leven vooral tot uiting komt de zogenaamde 'denktank' cultuur.
De nieuwe buitenlandse dreiging is dus het arabische terrorisme en de Islam geworden. Een probleem echter, om een oorlog te beginnen, moet er wel een eerste slag zijn, en het kunnen natuurlijk niet de Amerikanen zijn die zo'n oorlog begint. Dus is het Al-Qa'ida netwerk ingezet, die nog is opgezet door Papa Bush, tijdens zijn tijd met de CIA. ISI en SA veiligheidsdiensten hebben verder geholpen. Dat deze combinatie helemaal niet zover gezocht is, blijkt bijvoorbeeld uit het feit dat in 1985 er een aanslag werd gepleegd op een populaire Shi'itische leider op een moskee in Beiroet. De aanslag mislukte, want het doelwit is ontkomen, er kwamen wel meer dan 80 mensen om het leven. De aanval werd uitgevoerd met behulp van Saudisch geld.
Om te concluderen met de woorden van Thomas Friedman (NYTimes) aan Ari Shavit(Ha'aretz) die zijn woorden een artikel omzette: "I could give you the names of 25 people - all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office - who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened".
Dan denk ik dus, als ze in 2000 waren opgesloten, dan had 11 september ook niet plaatsgevonden.
Geplaatst door jaja
volgenns Lennart gebeurt niets op deze wereld zonder dat de neocons en / of Israel het op poten hebben gezet ... Eigenlijk is de rest van de wereld een stelletje nietsnutten dat nooit iets alleen kan ... Het idee dat een ander op een idee zou kunnen komen en het zou kunnen uitvoeren ... onmogelijk!!:)
Ga je weer :rolleyes:
Jaja = De grootste appologist van Westers terreur dat op aarde rondloopt.
Geplaatst door lennart
Ga je weer :rolleyes:
Jaja = De grootste appologist van Westers terreur dat op aarde rondloopt. oeh ... dan zijn er maar erg weinig apologisten van die "terreur" ... :) ... wat is het Westen toch goed he?? :D
Geplaatst door jaja
oeh ... dan zijn er maar erg weinig apologisten van die "terreur" ... :) ... wat is het Westen toch goed he?? :D
Er zijn er genoeg hoor, maar jouw hypocrisie is grenzeloos. Typisch CIDI trekje is dat. Je zal je bazen ongetwijfeld plezier doen met je fascistische steunbetuigingen. Je fascistische droombeelden over al die Iraakse en Afghaanse slachtoffers die zijn gevallen tijdens die mooie 'war on terrorism' zullen je plezieren.
Geplaatst door lennart
Ze wilden een 'oorlog tegen terrorisme'.
Reeds begin jaren negentig lanceerde Bernard Lewis zijn stelling dat Islam de tegenstander van de "vrije" Westen zou worden, vervolgens heeft Huntington dit idee omgezet in een slogan 'Clash of Civilizations'. Neocons, moet je weten, hebben goed geluisterd naar de politieke filosoof Leo Strauss. Leo Strauss was een Joodse duitser die vlak voor de tweedeoorlog naar de VS vluchtte. Vreemd genoeg gaf hij niet Nazi-Duitsland de schuld voor de Jodenvervolging, maar de Weimar-Republiek, dat toeliet dat de Nazi's aan de macht kwam. Hij verachtte de liberaal democratische toekomstvisie van de 18de eeuwse filosofen.
Daarentegen zag hij veel de ideeen van de ouden, zo onderwees hij Plato. Zijn ideaal staat was dan ook niet een liberale democratische staat, maar een autocratische staat geleid door de elite, die onwelwillende elementen makkelijk zouden kunnen elimineren. Hij beargumenteerde ook dat deze visie niet op te leggen zou zijn aan het volk als er geen buitenlandse dreiging is. Kortom een methode om de burgers massaal achter het land te krijgen. Hierin speelt ook religie een rol, niet als spirituele rol, maar als opium voor volk (Marx idee, maar volgens hem was het beter het dan maar af te schaffen, Strauss' idee was juist dat het volk haar opium nodig heeft).
Strauss was leermeester van de Neocon stroming. Hij leidde zeer invloedrijke politici op en zij zetten een indrukwekkend netwerk op, die in het politieke leven vooral tot uiting komt de zogenaamde 'denktank' cultuur.
De nieuwe buitenlandse dreiging is dus het arabische terrorisme en de Islam geworden. Een probleem echter, om een oorlog te beginnen, moet er wel een eerste slag zijn, en het kunnen natuurlijk niet de Amerikanen zijn die zo'n oorlog begint. Dus is het Al-Qa'ida netwerk ingezet, die nog is opgezet door Papa Bush, tijdens zijn tijd met de CIA. ISI en SA veiligheidsdiensten hebben verder geholpen. Dat deze combinatie helemaal niet zover gezocht is, blijkt bijvoorbeeld uit het feit dat in 1985 er een aanslag werd gepleegd op een populaire Shi'itische leider op een moskee in Beiroet. De aanslag mislukte, want het doelwit is ontkomen, er kwamen wel meer dan 80 mensen om het leven. De aanval werd uitgevoerd met behulp van Saudisch geld.
Om te concluderen met de woorden van Thomas Friedman (NYTimes) aan Ari Shavit(Ha'aretz) die zijn woorden een artikel omzette: "I could give you the names of 25 people - all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office - who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened".
Dan denk ik dus, als ze in 2000 waren opgesloten, dan had 11 september ook niet plaatsgevonden.
Bagger, lees de Kijk van deze maand maar eens. Daar worden alle complottheorien over de VS\Israel de grond in geschoffeld.
De VS was gewoon verrast niet meer en niet minder
Geplaatst door Blade20
Bagger, lees de Kijk van deze maand maar eens. Daar worden alle complottheorien over de VS\Israel de grond in geschoffeld.
De VS was gewoon verrast niet meer en niet minder
Het woord Israel komt niet voor in mijn stukje, wordt ook niet gesuggeerd. Kortom jij bent echt weer zo'n anti-semiet, die in elk complottheorie de hand van Israel ziet. Getver vieze anti-semiet. :rolleyes:
Ik ben wel benieuwd of de Kijk ook iets heeft geschreven over Leo Strauss :p
Geplaatst door lennart
Het woord Israel komt niet voor in mijn stukje, wordt ook niet gesuggeerd. Kortom jij bent echt weer zo'n anti-semiet, die in elk complottheorie de hand van Israel ziet. Getver vieze anti-semiet. :rolleyes:
Ik ben wel benieuwd of de Kijk ook iets heeft geschreven over Leo Strauss :p
Lol, Anti-Semiet. IkbenmeereenAnti-alleswatmaarmeteeneextremevisie vangelooftemakenheeftofonterechtgeweldengeweldisal tijdonterechttyp.
Maar je begrijpt denk ik wel wat ik bedoel.
Veel mensen vinden dergelijke redenen voor zo'n ingrijpende gebeurtenissen niet afdoende en gaan zo dingen verzinnen.
Voorbeelden zijn: Roswell, JFK en de uitvinding van de paperclip. :)
Rumors of Bin Laden’s Lair
Some believe life on the run has made it impossible for Osama bin Laden to control and lead Al Qaeda. In Afghanistan’s Kunar province, people tell a different story
By Sami Yousafzai And Ron Moreau
NEWSWEEK: Sept. 8 issue — Gray-bearded and almost toothless, Khan Kaka lives in a mud house with a weather-beaten pine door beside a little plot of corn and vegetables. But to his neighbors in this corner of Afghanistan’s remote Kunar province, the gangling, tobacco-chewing old man is one of the most respected figures in the Pech River valley.
It's all about connections: since 1996 Kaka’s son-in-law, an Algerian named Abu Hamza al Jazeeri, has been a special bodyguard to the man Kaka calls loar sheik—”big chief”—Osama bin Laden.
Every two months or so, al Jazeeri comes down from the mountains to visit his wife and three sons, who live with Kaka. “He appears and disappears like lightning,” Kaka says. “I never know when he’s coming or going.” The old man and his neighbors listen eagerly to the latest news from the Qaeda leader’s hideout. On a visit in January al Jazeeri reported that one of bin Laden’s daughters-in-law had recently died in childbirth, and that bin Laden spoke at her funeral, blaming America for her death. Only a few dozen mourners could attend, not the thousands who would ordinarily pay their last respects. Bin Laden blamed America for that, too. “I had enough riches to enjoy myself like an Arab sheik,” bin Laden said, according to al Jazeeri’s account. “But I decided to fight against those infidel forces that want to sever us from our Islamic roots. For that cause, Arabs, Taliban and my family have been martyred.” Kaka and his neighbors have memorized the eulogy. Asked where bin Laden is now, Kaka grins and waves without a word toward the 12,000-foot peaks surrounding the valley: up there.
No one seems to have a better answer. Two years after the September 11 attacks, the world’s Most Wanted terrorist remains free. “We don’t know where he is,” says U.S. Army Col. Rodney Davis, spokesman for America’s forces in Afghanistan. “And frankly, it’s not about him. We’ll continue to focus on killing, capturing and denying sanctuary to any anti-Coalition forces, whether they are influenced by bin Laden or not.” Some U.S. officials speculate that life on the run has made it impossible for bin Laden to communicate with his followers, effectively turning him into a figurehead. “Bin Laden’s operational role is not as important as it was to Al Qaeda and the Taliban,” says a senior U.S. diplomat in Kabul. “But symbolically he is still very important.”
He’s more than that, according to senior Taliban officials contacted by NEWSWEEK in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They say bin Laden remains directly engaged as a strategist and financier for Al Qaeda, the Taliban and related groups. In April, shortly after the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, the Qaeda leader convened the biggest terror summit since September 11 at a mountain stronghold in Afghanistan. The participants included three top-ranking representatives from the Taliban, several senior Qaeda operatives and leaders from radical Islamic groups in Chechnya and Uzbekistan, according to a former Taliban deputy foreign minister. He got the details from a Taliban colleague who was there. Bin Laden, in a fiery mood, appointed one of his most trusted lieutenants, Saif al-Adil, to be Al Qaeda’s chief of operations in Iraq. The leader handed the Egyptian-born al-Adel a letter of introduction, asking all religious leaders, businessmen and mujahedin to give him any support possible. Al-Adel left Afghanistan immediately. A few weeks later he was reported to be in neighboring Iran, where he is said to be under house arrest. The Taliban official nevertheless insists, contrary to American intelligence assessments, that al-Adel made it to Iraq and is organizing anti-U.S. operations.
At the same meeting bin Laden said he was working on “serious projects,” another ranking Taliban source tells NEWSWEEK. “His priority is to use biological weapons,” says the source, who claims that Al Qaeda already has such weapons. The question is only how to transport and launch them, he asserts. The source insists he doesn’t know any further details but brags: “Osama’s next step will be unbelievable.” The plan was reportedly delayed and revised after the March capture of Al Qaeda’s operations chief, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. U.S. intelligence officials say no one disputes bin Laden’s interest in germ warfare. Nevertheless, they argue, his main priority is to kill Americans by any means readily at hand—and most bioweapons are harder to get and use than many of the alternatives.
No one but bin Laden himself knows exactly what he’s planning. So where is he? “Up there,” says Pashtun Momand, the police major in charge of Kunar province’s counterterrorism office. He’s pointing at the thickly forested mountains east of the tiny provincial capital. A few people deny that bin Laden is living there. The province’s governor, Said Fazel Akbar, insists that U.S. and Afghan forces are in hot pursuit. “He may come to Kunar,” Akbar says, “but he can’t stay for long.” His opinion is not widely held.
Bin Laden seems to be in good health, according to both the former Taliban deputy foreign minister and an Afghan named Haroon, who claims to have visited the Qaeda leader in June. Three of bin Laden’s sons are said to be with him, sworn to kill their father rather than let him be captured alive. Two of his wives are said to be living nearby in the mountains, but not with him; he visits them when security allows. Taliban sources say the Qaeda leader communicates with his friends and followers via handwritten letters and computer disks delivered by relays of messengers. Each carrier knows only where to find the next link in the chain. The system is slow, but it keeps the Americans from using electronic intercepts to find him.
Bin Laden could hardly ask for a better hiding place. Even some American officials agree that Kunar is a likely refuge. The sparsely populated province isn’t big—less than two thirds the land area of Connecticut—but it offers more comfort and protection for bin Laden than any other part of Afghanistan. “There is no effective central government control in the mountains beyond the capital,” says Kunar’s chief of police, Col. Abdul Saffa Momand (no relation to the major). The mountain roads are almost impassable; his men have no radios, and their families barely survive on their monthly salary of $14—when the paychecks come at all. “A soldier on patrol at night is risking his life for nothing,” the colonel says. “It’s impossible to access the areas where Al Qaeda is hiding,” he adds. “Even from a helicopter you only see mountains, rocks and trees.” Unlike the desert ranges that are typical in Afghanistan, Kunar’s mountains are covered with evergreens and shrubs, and the terrain is crisscrossed with smugglers’ trails leading over the border into Pakistan.
Kunar’s population is, likewise, congenial to bin Laden. In recent decades the province has become home to more than a thousand Arab men, many of whom—like bin Laden’s bodyguard al Jazeeri—have intermarried with local Afghans, gaining strong family ties in the region. At the height of the war against the Soviets in the 1980s, the CIA effectively ceded Kunar to the Arab volunteers who were pouring in to join the mujahedin. “We preferred that they operate in their own fief, and out of our way,” says Edmund McWilliams, a retired State Department officer and Congress’s special representative to the mujahedin during the late 1980s. In the last two years the mujahedin veterans have been joined by hundreds of Qaeda members and supporters uprooted from other parts of Afghanistan.
Bin Laden and his followers are living in relative comfort, officials in Kunar believe. Some may be huddled in the caves that honeycomb the mountains, but Major Momand’s intelligence sources say others live openly in stone and mud houses built against the steep slopes, hidden by the trees and underbrush. Many of the dwellings have been renovated in the last two years. The Arabs share the mountains with Afghan nomads whose flocks of sheep and goats graze there. Shali Khan, together with his wife and two children, tends a herd of 150 sheep and goats, and often encounters columns of heavily armed Arabs traveling on horseback or on foot. He says he’s glad to see them. “These Arabs are good people fighting the jihad,” says Khan, who takes evident pride in his pointed mustache, despite his tattered clothes and mended sandals. “They pay me well for my animals and milk.”
Bin Laden apparently feels safe enough to receive visitors—with precautions. In May an Afghan named Haroon asked permission to see the Qaeda leader. The young man is active in the Taliban’s anti-U.S. resistance, and he had guided bin Laden from the besieged cave complex at Tora Bora to safety in the Shahikot Valley during the U.S. bombing in late 2001 (“How Al Qaeda Slipped Away,” Aug. 19, 2002). The month after sending his request, Haroon got a message directing him to a place in the mountains north of his home in Paktia province. From there, he was taken higher into the mountains by a series of guides, each one greeting the next with a whispered password. After three days he was turned over to a group of Arabs. They strip-searched him, placed his ring, watch and shoes in a bag and closely inspected the buttons on his shirt.
He spent the night barefoot in a nearby cave. At sunrise two armed Arabs, their faces covered by scarves, escorted him to an old mud-and-rock house and told him to sit there and wait. Haroon says he felt afraid. Suddenly bin Laden arrived and spoke in Arabic, slowly and quietly, urging the young man to keep fighting. “The deserts of Afghanistan are being irrigated with the blood of mujahedin,” he told Haroon. “But the jihad will never dry up.” After about 15 minutes the visit ended. “Please don’t try to see me again,” bin Laden said.
Will he ever be caught? For more than a year, Afghanistan has been sinking deeper into poverty, chaos and despair while the White House focuses on Iraq. Al Qaeda and the Taliban have not wasted the chance to regroup. Now the administration is promising to double Afghanistan’s reconstruction aid to $1.8 billion. Even loyal Republicans fear that it’s not nearly enough. They know what happened the last time America ignored Afghanistan. The anniversary is next week.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4586.htm
Mooi stukje proza :)
Ze weten al lang waar ie zit.
Zeepaardje
02-09-03, 20:21
Geplaatst door GroteWolf
Ze weten al lang waar ie zit.
Waarom doen ze dan niets? :confused:
Sommige mensen moet je achterban eerst van losweken ofzo. Anders gaan daar ook weer dingen mis misschien. Maar wat denk jij GroteWolf?